Author: Shreoshe Ghosh

When it comes to reaching out to new consumers, nothing beats the effectiveness of paid search advertising. We know that most people start their research for products on search engines like Google and Bing, so focusing on PPC ads that appear when searching for something is a guaranteed way for businesses to increase their chances of being found.

Poor PPC marketing strategies are often responsible for bringing low-quality traffic to your landing pages. What if it’s been affecting your ROI too? If so, you’re not alone. Luckily, there are some ways to recover from these poor performance woes. In this post, we’ll discuss the 13 best PPC practices to promote your business.

1. Find the Right Platforms to Advertise

When we talk about PPC advertising, the most common platform that comes to our mind is Google Ads. It’s a great way to advertise your business using paid advertising methods. 

However, it doesn’t mean you should spend your entire ad budget on it alone; there are many other platforms where running ads is just as profitable. The best ones will depend on who you’re targeting and what you’re trying to achieve, whether driving traffic or lead generation. Researching beforehand will allow you to discover the right platforms while understanding what they can offer.

For example, Facebook is among the most popular social media platforms for running paid ads for B2C consumers. Running Facebook ad campaigns boosts your website traffic and lead generation efforts and gives you a lot of bang for your buck. In addition, Facebook ads can increase engagement rates – leading to more growth over time, higher retention rates, and increased sales opportunities.

Facebook Ad Manager allows you to utilize its helpful tools when creating professional ads promoting your business. You can target audiences based on their interests, age, occupation, gender and more. With these highly targeted ads appearing in news feeds, inboxes, stories and more, you can capture more leads for your business. Likewise, you could run ad campaigns on social media sites like Twitter or Instagram. 

For B2B businesses, LinkedIn can be an ideal place to promote products and services. With the LinkedIn Campaign Manager, you can conduct highly targeted ad campaigns, including text ads, sponsored posts, sponsored InMails, and dynamic ads on the platform. 

When you connect with people on LinkedIn, you’re making connections with professional decision-makers. By marketing here, you can easily reach the key people at a company you plan to target. This is a brilliant marketing strategy for B2B businesses to connect with potential customers faster and generate more quality leads.

2. Make Social Media a Part of Your PPC Ad Strategy

Social media ads work differently than Google AdWords since they’re displayed right on users’ feeds and aren’t as easily blocked by ad-blocking software. While keywords are important in Google Ads, demographic targeting has more sway with social media promotions. You can test various ad formats, including text ads, images, or videos, when it comes to social promotions. 

Social media ads provide an effective way to explore and analyze your audiences’ needs. With this information, you can refine and improve your campaigns for better performance. Social media ads also effectively increase customer engagement by showing them relevant content. Brand Loyalty is one of the most critical aspects of a business. This makes social media essential when strengthening company loyalty or building new relationships with potential customers.

It is crucial to understand that social media and Google ads are very beneficial when combined because they serve various purposes. For example, social media ads can help brands grow awareness among people who might not know about them yet but don’t typically lead to many conversions. 

Google ad clicks are most successful when someone has heard of the company before – which happens more often on social media. When it comes down to making smart decisions, combining these two advertising methods can result in success no matter what industry you’re trying to break into.

3. Launch Retargeting Ad Campaigns 

Marketers often use PPC retargeting to advertise their products or services to those who visited their website or gave them contact information. Retargeted PPC ads can be highly effective since more than 90% of people don’t purchase after visiting a website for the first time. When marketers aim these ads at the same visitors again, they’re 70% more likely to buy something from this site!

In addition to deepening consumers’ knowledge about the advertised products, retargeting reinforces branding. The more people see your retargeted ad, the more familiar they become with the logo, colors and design. Retargeting is also inexpensive because it advertises directly to people who have already shown interest in your brand, giving them another opportunity to convert.

4. Explore Look Alike and Similar Audience

When running a campaign on Facebook or Google and looking for potential consumers who are likely to buy your product, lookalike audiences can be an effective way to reach the right individuals. Lookalikes are groups of people who have engaged with content related to your company before, grouped together based on their social behavior, interests, and so forth. 

A company needs at least 100 user data points or about 10-15% of its total audience size to create a target group for advertisers who want to find new customers through ads on Google or Facebook. When marketers implement this type of filter along with other filters like similar audiences, they can see significantly increased revenue in their campaigns.

One of the many advantages of using Lookalike Audiences is that it allows you to reach a wider audience than you would typically be able to. This is because Lookalike Audiences aren’t limited to those who already know about your brand or product. Instead, this parameter allows you to target users who share similarities with your current customer base, making an excellent opportunity for growth. 

Another advantage of using Lookalike Audiences is that they can help increase your Return On Investment (ROI). This is because they allow you to target consumers who are more likely to buy what you’re selling, leading to increased lead and sale generation on ad campaigns. By connecting lookalike audiences to your Google Ads Display and Search Campaigns, you can improve impressions, clicks, conversions and more. 

5. Create Mobile-Friendly Landing Pages

Landing pages are a necessity for the success of a PPC campaign. They’re what users see when they come from clicking on an advertisement. Building a quality landing page must focus on highlighting the benefits of the advertised product or service and give clear instructions about what action you want users to take. 

If it’s poorly designed, you could potentially waste money because people who land on your page might click away before doing anything, leaving your ad unsuccessful.

With over half of all internet traffic coming from mobile devices, ensuring your landing pages are optimized for those screens is essential. Without a mobile-optimized landing page, you may miss out on crucial traffic when running PPC ads. 

Consider these factors when designing a mobile-friendly landing page: first, ensure that your site loads quickly; if it takes more than three seconds for a web page to load up, people will leave. Second and arguably most important, your landing page should be responsive and intuitive – providing an excellent copy that steers visitors through the final steps. 

Finally, the call to action should be strong, clear and immediate. It is ideal for a call to action to appear on the first-page element of content that users see on their mobile devices. If you’re looking for ways to improve your mobile landing pages, consider A/B testing. It is a crucial tool because it allows paid search marketers to identify areas where they can improve and grow their landing pages to facilitate higher conversions.

6. Set a Proper PPC Advertising Budget

A PPC ad campaign often fails due to an unrealistically low budget. Setting the proper ad campaign budget is as important as choosing the right target audience. Therefore, you need to set a realistic budget to help you execute different stages of your PPC advertising campaign successfully. 

When you start with PPC campaigns, a substantial amount of your budget will be spent researching the average CPC in your industry and A/B testing your target keywords, audience, demographics and other parameters. When you research the averages in your industry, you’ll know how much your competitors spend on their PPC ads and help you budget accordingly.

Google’s Keyword Planner allows you access to various tools which enable more accurate refinement of your audience and budget. You can use the tool to search for new keywords, combine keyword lists, get click and cost performance forecasts, and find data about how many times a certain word or phrase was used in searches over time, etc.

Many PPC experts rely on a sequence formula to determine an appropriate advertising budget. You should multiply the average monthly searches of all relevant keywords (based on your Keyword Planner report) by a targeted search impression share (often 50% or 70%). This will give you the probable number of impressions your ads might receive for all words included in the research.

Once you have determined how many impressions may occur, it’s time to decide how many clicks there could be. For that, you need to multiply the impression count by an expected CTR( click-through rate). With both numbers plotted out, you can then calculate your PPC budget. 

To do that, multiply the number of possible clicks by your Keyword Planner report’s average CPC (cost per click). Your formula should look like this: Potential volume of clicks x Average CPC = Potential ad spend.

7. Develop Click-Worthy Ad Copies

Your advertisements should be value-driven and memorable for your target audience regardless of the industry. A high-quality advertisement should be relevant to your company and entice potential prospects. A good ad copy has three main parts, the headline, the body copy and the call-to-action. 

In your headline, it is always better to show the benefits and not the features because the user does not care about what you offer but wants to know how it will help him.

Avoid using superfluous language and focus on words important to your content. Try mentioning unique features or benefits in your ad copy to maximize conversions. Use an emotional tone to enhance your ad copy because they make the viewer feel as if the company understands his problems and has taken steps to resolve them.

A call-to-action is the last chance to bring in customers for your business and convince them to click on the ad to visit your website. Having a good call-to-action increases your click-through rate (CTR) and the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns. 

When you create a call-to-action, ensure you are perfectly clear about what you want the users to do. Avoid using generic phrases like “Click Here” or “Know More” and instead use phrases that will encourage them to take action. Practice makes perfect when writing ads, but they can hugely boost conversions once mastered.

8. Use Responsive Ads 

Responsive ads can automate your PPC strategy to bring in more leads and conversions. Responsive ads utilize the power of machine learning to automatically adjust the size, format and appearance of your ads to fit available ad spaces.

Responsive ads come in two forms:

• Responsive Display Ads: Responsive Display Ads are automatically created by Google with the assets provided by you. Google will automatically adjust its size, format and look to fit the available ad space on Google Display Network.

• Responsive Search Ads: Responsive Search Ads are ads that show more text by letting you add multiple headlines and descriptions for an ad copy. Google will automatically match and analyze each option and show the best combination that puts forth your message more clearly and has the potential to perform better. 

For regular display ads, you need to use specific designs to fit certain spaces, but responsive ads allow you to reach out to a more extensive audience base by producing highly adaptable ads designed around all screen sizes and formats.

Responsive ads are the best option for small business owners who don’t have the time or resources to spend creating a standard display ad. These ads automatically adapt to fit every screen size from desktop, laptop and phone screens – so there is no need to worry about mismatched sizes or fonts! 

Since most of these smaller companies hire outside designers for their display advertising needs, responsive ads are the best way to go for small businesses with limited resources. Creating a standard display ad can be a complex process as you must manually adjust the size, font and other factors to fit in the ad space. 

Generally, smaller companies do not have an in-house design team, they usually rely on external designers to fulfill the need for display ads. However, with the introduction of responsive ads, there is no need for external help. They are quick and easy to create. A simple yet effective responsive ad design only needs a logo and 2 or 3 high-resolution images.

Responsive ads have performed better in some accounts than standard display ads. This is not always the case; however, if you want a higher chance of success, it’s best to go with a responsive design campaign.

9. Run A/B Split Tests

How can you find out which PPC ad copy will perform better or what kinds of audience demographics might bring about better results for your campaign? Through A/B Split Testing. It is imperative for the success of your PPC ad campaigns. You may run this test to find the best versions of various PPC ad elements, such as headlines, descriptions, landing pages, bids, location targeting and more. 

With the results from an A/B Split Test data analysis, you may compare how two different ads perform against one another. This data analysis should help improve your overall ad campaign performance and generate better revenue.

Another advantage to A/B testing is that once you figure out what kind of message resonates with your audience, your click-through rate (CTR) will naturally increase. When CTR goes up, Quality Score goes up too, which lowers the cost per click (CPC). Consequently, you can run more paid ads to drive more business revenue.

10. Reanalyze Your Targeted Keywords

Keyword research in PPC campaigns is one of the most extensive and continuous tasks. Seasoned PPC marketers never stop researching and refining their list of PPC keywords using the best keyword research tools at their disposal. A PPC keyword research should include a mix of long-tail and short-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are less specific but make the most of search-driven traffic. These keywords are also less competitive, reducing your cost per click cost.

Your PPC keyword strategy should also have a negative keyword list to avoid showing your ads in irrelevant search results and wasting your PPC budget. In addition, you have to ensure that your list of keywords contains terms that are widely used by people in your niche for their regular searches. 

Every tool has its own way of figuring out how popular a particular keyword is. Each keyword tool is a little different, but the primary parameter you should be looking at is search volume. The higher the search volume, the more the number of searches per month using that keyword.

The Google Ads Keyword Planner assigns different levels of competition to keywords – high, medium, or low. A high level of competition means more advertisers are targeting these search terms, and bids will cost you more money. Low-competition, high-volume keywords are the best option for driving substantial traffic without breaking the bank.

If keywords have little or no search volume, then it’s best to remove them from your list. If the competition for certain keywords is high enough to consume your budget too quickly, you can drop them too. Nevertheless, using the Keyword Tool should allow you to find new keywords that were previously overlooked.

11. Revisit Keyword Match Types

Search engines show your paid ads based on keywords. These keywords can be further classified into different match types, namely exact match, broad match and phrase match. You must strategically use these keyword match types to build your PPC list. 

A keyword is matched word for word with no change in sequence for an exact match. Broad Match type is Google’s default setting for all the keywords. This setting will include all the related terms to your keywords, including synonyms, misspellings, and other related terms. Phrase Match tells Google to show your ads for queries where your keyword matches anywhere within a larger query.

12. Improve the Structure of Your PPC Ad Campaign

If your PPC ad account doesn’t have a clear structure, your campaigns won’t perform as per your expectations. It will affect your Quality Score and make it difficult to segment your ad campaigns. Therefore, you need to focus on restructuring your existing PPC account and ensure that it meets the following objectives:

• What is the purpose of your ad campaign? Is it to grow leads for your business or get more clicks on your website?
• Segmentation of ad groups based on interests of the audience
• Segmentation of ad groups based on the category of products or services that you offer
• Choosing keywords that meet the purpose of the ad groups

It is usually advisable to have a few campaigns focusing on different products, locations, or other themes that make sense for your business goals. One way you can divide up these campaigns and ad groups is by considering the layout of your website. Consider a nomenclature that would be clear to anyone working on the campaigns from now until forever, and create an accessible spreadsheet for every team member.

To establish a standard PPC campaign structure, start with Campaign names. It could be classified as a product type, location, and/or audience. This is the largest umbrella category under which Ad Groups will come. For example, if you are into unisex clothing retail, your categories can be “Men” and “Women.” 

In Ad Groups, you have to establish what kind of products you will be advertising underneath each product category. For example, under the campaign “Women,” you can have two ad groups named “Summer Wear” and “Winter Wear.” 

Once you choose your ad groups, you have to select the best keywords for each of them, create ad copies, A/B test them, and select the one that has the best lead-capturing potential. Finally, you need to link these ad copies to the right landing pages where the conversions will occur. 

13. Launch a Micro-Conversion Campaign 

A micro-conversion campaign aims to hook users and get them to move a step forward towards the main conversion goal. Smaller conversions can help you lead users to the main goal more efficiently. Micro-conversion strategy can target specific demographics and move them further down the funnel leading them to purchase. A good example is asking visitors to sign up on your website for exclusive access to early-bird offers and discounts.

It is rare for someone to accidentally find your website, view a page or two, and then purchase without hesitation. People follow an anticipated customer journey before making such decisions, so one way you can increase conversions is through micro-conversions.

Micro-conversions don’t ask much of a visitor. They really want someone to show interest in your business or product. Micro-conversions are less about completing transactions or signing up for an account and instead focus on browsing and exploring the website. 

You can find out what’s working best for you by looking at which micro-conversions attract repeat visitors and which ones never seem to pick up traction. Once you know how your target audience behaves, you can use the data to create better PPC ad campaigns. 

Wrapping Up

PPC marketing is a powerful and effective tool for growing leads and conversions. It helps you target your audience smartly using platforms like Google or harnessing the power of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Paid advertising offers great potential to reach large groups of people in a relatively short period and give your business much-needed exposure that can be difficult to obtain organically.